


The Dancer

by calenlily



Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Irish Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-01
Updated: 2011-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:31:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calenlily/pseuds/calenlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He called her The Dancer. [An original fairytale inspired by Irish faerie lore.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dancer

**Author's Note:**

> Not so much a "fairy tale" as based on faerie lore. Also likely somewhat inspired by the song "Gypsy Rose" by Tracy Grammer.

He called her The Dancer. She had no name of her own, you see, when they found the girl laying crumpled at the edge of the woods near Kerry Manor. No name, nor knowledge of who she was or from whence she’d come.

Some murmured darkly at her mysterious appearance and the strange runic symbol hanging around her neck. The old priest said no good would come of her, and they would do well to be rid of her now. But Thomas Kerry, the young lord of Kerry Manor, would hear no word of it. She was but a girl, he said, and a girl confused, frightened and badly hurt; no one was to lift a hand against her. He took her up on his own horse and brought her back to the Manor.

She was commended to the care of the healers, and as the days passed her body mended. But when Thomas looked in on her, as he did each day, he slowly realized that even as her wounds healed, she was growing ever more pale and wan.

And then one day when he came by, she opened her eyes. She met his gaze, and he found that her eyes were of the lightest green, and piercing.

“You brought me here,” she said distinctly, startling him. He wondered how she knew, for she had been insensible at the time.

He nodded silently.

“Take me from this place.” It was a soft plea.

So Thomas Kerry, the young lord of Kerry Manor, again took her up on his own horse. She smiled at the touch of sun and open air on her face, and laughed when they sped across the wide fields.

He stopped before they reached the edge of the wood, and wordlessly she slid from the horse. His breath caught in his throat for a minute, certain she was going to slip away, and he found that he was unaccountably terrified of that event.

Instead, she began to dance.

He watched, entranced, as she twirled, as she dipped and wove in intricate patterns, flawlessly following some inaudible rhythm. Her long dark hair spun out to frame her, and the wind whipped about her like a cloak.

She reached out a hand to him. “Dance with me.”

“I dare not,” he said. “I have not the skill, and I fear to spoil a thing of such beauty.”

She was silent for long minutes. And so still. He did not like to see her so still.

He was surprised to hear himself speak. “Marry me.”

“Only if you promise me one thing.”

“Anything.”

“Swear to me that you will never keep me caged behind walls.”

“Why, that is nothing. Gladly I so swear.”

“Then gladly will I be your bride.”

*

And gladly then did the time pass. The new lady of Kerry Manor could often be found out riding or hunting, and, ever in the bloom of health, was often seen to outmatch her male companions. Often, too, did she dance, in the wide fields and in the rooms of the manor. When she asked her lord to join her dance, he always demurred, feeling that he was no match for her grace. But she was not deterred.

Within the year it came to pass that she became with child, and so after came the time for her lying-in.

She protested all she could, but to no avail. Defeated, her eyes wide with terror, she met the gaze of her lord.

“You promised,” she whispered.

“It is necessary,” he said softly, “and out of my control.”

But he could not forget the accusation in her voice, the sense that he had betrayed her. And soon she seemed to wither, growing paler and weaker by the day. She came to childbed before her time, and the midwife feared for the mother’s life as well as the child’s, so faded was she.

She was delivered of a daughter, healthy for all that she was small, who was quickly passed off to her anxious father as the midwife hurried back to care for the mother.

And returned minutes later in shock and terror. “She is gone. Milord, the lady is vanished!”

*

Nor was sign of her ever seen again, at the manor nor in the lands around. Except that Thomas Kerry, the young lord of Kerry Manor, swore at times that he saw a figure dancing out in the far fields, dark hair flying and moving with a grace he’d only ever seen in one. But when he came closer, there was no one there.

Until a year to the day from the birth of his daughter. Seeing again the vision of his lost lady, he sped across the wide fields to find her there, lost in her dance, the wind whipping about her like a cloak.

Her eyes, the lightest green and piercing, met his, and she extended a hand to him.

“Dance with me,” he said, as he never had before, and took her offered hand.  
He was caught up in the cloak of wind, could feel the intangible rhythm she followed pulsing through him, and was carried away into dipping and spinning and grace.

Then they were gone.

*

The young lady of Kerry Manor grew to ride and hunt more skillfully than any man in those lands, and to dance like a star in flame.


End file.
